FOR VAYIGASH
Dealing with senseless murder:
LESSONS FROM FIRST GRADE
Do you remember first grade?
I do. Not just because I have a child currently in first grade. Even after more than four decades, I remember my teacher, Rabbi Aharon Cousins, may he live and be well, who has become a good friend. I even remember where I sat in the classroom, and who was next to me.
We did not spend our time, however, merely sitting there. We were studying and learning. The memory of what we studied, though, I cannot evoke, other than for one thing: The teacher had written the names of all the Torah portions on the board. He then asked us to memorize them. I still remember them to this day.
First grade is not a grade in which one necessarily studies individual subjects. It is the time when students are taught the pedagogical tools that, as time moves on, can and should aid them in their future studies. As such, other than some impressionable reminiscences here or there, not much is normally remembered from that time into adulthood. It could be a little more, depending on the teacher, of course. But not too much. Most people do not even remember their teacher. First grade teachers, then, humbly do their work almost exclusively for the purpose of teaching, taking responsibility for generations to come while knowing that very little credit will be coming their way.
The surviving first grade students from Newtown, Connecticut, will never forget the fear and the evil wrought upon them during and after last week’s inexplicable slaughter of their classmates, teachers, and staff. By now, everyone knows that. Their innocence has been shattered.
There is, however, another side to this: The first grade teachers of that school taught the rest of world a lesson that no one will forget. This was not a lesson based on their studies for their teaching certification, nor was it one they would usually teach their students. This was a lesson of bravery, of courage, and of sacrifice. This was a lesson of focus on what is right in the face of brutal and malicious wickedness.
Here was a person bent on carnage and a bloodbath. Very few individuals of this world have had to face this. It was a pogrom; an indiscriminate assassination, deliberately targeting and pursuing the young. Some teachers sacrificed their own lives, while others patiently and lovingly wooed their students – who were, mind you, not their own children – to calmness and composure, despite the specter of certain death should they have been discovered. The many children they saved in the chaos and panic are a tribute to their heroism.
It is not possible to suggest that these teachers and school administrators were not fearful. They all heard the screams. They all heard the gunfire. They all heard the dreadful silence following the gunfire. These plucky teachers, however, taught an amazing lesson of devotion, courage, valor, and heroism.
The perpetrator of this malevolent act is said to have been beset with mental issues. This is merely an excuse. The world is filled with mentally deranged people, but few of them ever cross the line into butchering innocent, defenseless children. This character had to have known about the pain he was going to inflict. He may have been desensitized by his reported obsession with a video game that does lots of shooting, and where bits of brain are seen spilling out of killed “people.” Millions of people play those same games without ever descending to such vile depths. Some say he snapped. I say that some European Jews who survived the Holocaust might have “snapped” after seeing their families murdered. Yet no survivor of the Holocaust later used that excuse to massacre innocent Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Hungarians, or Frenchmen.
Some tend to blame the guns. They call on the authorities to ban weapons. Whether this would be a positive development or not, I do not know. Personally, the home in which I grew up had a total ban on guns, even water guns. This ban extends to my current home as well. The only time I ever held and shot a gun was over thirty years ago, when I spent one of the holidays in a volatile location in the Holy Land with soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces. We were required to walk with a gun for our safety, and were taken to a range for practice shooting. We ended up not needing the guns, as we were constantly escorted by the soldiers. I have not held a firearm since.
Blaming the guns in this case, however, is also merely an excuse. Millions have guns. All over modern day Israel, guns are in one’s face. Yet, no one has chosen to walk into a school and use a gun to murder and inflict such devastation upon the young and innocent – outside of vicious Arab and Muslim terrorists, of course, and their despicable Nazi friends before them.
Why this person chose so coldly and brutally to extinguish the lives of so many, including that of his own mother, is unclear. What is clear is that this was his calculated intention.
And this is where the lesson from the first grade teachers comes in. When making choices in their reactions, each one of them put her own life in danger, and with calculated intentions, protected the children to the best of her ability. One of the teachers who was later interviewed described their ordeal. Each time she recalled the chaos and horror, she broke down, and one can see the terror in her face. But when she described the lengths to which they went to protect the children, she was resolute, strong and valiant – which is a message delivered by this week’s Torah portion, “Vayigash.”
Joseph had revealed himself to his stunned brothers not just as their brother, but also as the viceroy of Egypt. He asked them to bring their father together with their entire family down from the holy land to Egypt. On their way down to Egypt, the family stopped on the border town of “Be’er Sheva,” where the Almighty spoke with Jacob. “Do not be afraid of going down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up.” (B’raishis (Genesis) 46:2-4.)
The Torah does not reveal the cause of Jacob’s fear. One could suggest that it was the thought of departing from the Holy Land, but this is questionable for two reasons: 1) Jacob did not live in Be’er Sheva. He was already en route to Egypt. Why would the Almighty appear to him now, after time had elapsed for him to have had come to terms with this departure himself? 2) This was not the first time Jacob had departed from the Holy Land. He had, in fact, married and had most of his thirteen children outside of the holy land. Did he really need to be fearful about leaving the Holy Land now?
One must therefore conclude, as some of the commentaries suggest, that it was specifically here, as he was about to cross the border that the realization of his leaving the Land became a reality. It pained and distressed Jacob that he was leaving the Land, never to return. He had hoped that his children would eventually become a great nation in the Land designated and promised to them.
The patriarch Jacob was told not be fearful. Going down to Egypt with his family was all part of the Divine plan. He was not told, however, not to feel sad. Jacob understood that he was not only heading away from the proper location, but he was actually leading his children into exile, which is what later happened in Egypt in a terrible way. Jacob’s fear was not in vain.
While the Almighty assuaged his fears, Jacob was never told his hurt, his ache, and his distress were wrong. Exile is a painful place and a painful state of being, no matter how good things may appear to be.
Those first grade teachers paid no heed to fear. At the same time, it hurts. Badly.
It is time to go back to first grade, certainly to those teachers in Newtown. From them, everyone can learn not to give in to feelings and fears, but to take forward action. And the action should be to focus on the Supreme Being. When children and adults are aware that there is a Higher Authority to Whom everyone is responsible, it teaches people them to think not of their own feelings and whims, but rather about accountability to their place in the world. Here is a link to a three part series from the Rebbe, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, regarding the right direction to take and for all to learn: http://youtu.be/jvQGrtXpZ7E. Please be sure to follow clip 2 and then 3 for the entire idea.
And one more point: It took this monster merely a few minutes to sow the most horrific darkness on children, adults, families, communities, an entire town, and the country. It tore at the very fiber of the great United States of America.
Can one imagine what even a few minutes of goodness can accomplish?
The power of good is more powerful than evil. No one fears being massacred by a moral, G-dly, decent person.
It is time for traditional values and morals to be brought back. It is time to pray to G-d and give charity to His needy children on this earth. It is time to head back to first grade and return to accountability, innocence, goodness, bravery and G-dliness.
May the Almighty send comfort to all the bereaved families and to the entire country. May the spirit of goodness engulf the entire world, ushering in the Messianic era, when all evil will be wiped away for good.
SUMMARY: A shocking act has gone too far. It is time to learn from Jacob and the first grade teachers: overcome personal fear – not natural pain – and lead people in the right direction.